No area of a business or facility runs in perfect condition. There’s always maintenance required to finetune operations and ensure production isn’t affected. This is where maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) comes in. Since keeping track of maintenance operations manually isn’t practical, CMMS software manages this task seamlessly.

Compare Top CMMS Software Leaders

What This Article Covers:

• What Is Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul?
• Examples of MRO Supplies, Tools and Equipment
• Types of Maintenance Using MRO Materials
• What is MRO Software?
• Primary Software Benefits
• Next Steps

What Is Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul?

Maintenance, repair and overhaul is the collection of procedures and actions necessary to keep a building or a factory in good working order. Additionally, it covers the physical upkeep of infrastructures, plant systems and machinery used for the facility’s principal outputs.

Maintenance, repair and overhaul first saw use in the military, as do many of today’s best practices for routine maintenance.

MRO is known in some businesses as maintenance, repair and operations. In either instance, MRO is a term that refers to the three primary categories of tangible things that a business uses daily. A facility’s MRO pool essentially consists of everything used to guarantee that goals are met.

Examples of MRO Supplies, Tools and Equipment

The expansive nature of MRO might be somewhat intimidating. It’s helpful to divide the entire list of MRO products into smaller categories of instances frequently seen in manufacturing plants.

Industrial Machinery

A significant portion of MRO materials consists of manufacturing equipment and spare components. Pumps, valves, motors, compressors and all their parts fall under this category.

It’s typically a good practice to classify them further in varied degrees of criticality due to the scope of this type of material.

Consumables

Usually undervalued, consumables make up a large portion of a facility’s inventory. This group includes lubricants, greases, fasteners and cleaning products.

Personal protective equipment (PPE) and safety gear are examples of supplies designed to increase workplace security and protect workers from various occupational risks. Smoke alarms, gas detectors and fire extinguishers are a few examples of safety equipment. PPE includes safety boots, work gloves, hard helmets, goggles and more.

Tools for Repair and Service

MRO inventory also consists of the equipment employees use to perform maintenance duties. Hammers, drills, screwdrivers and saws are common examples of hand and power tools. This category can also contain lawn care equipment for buildings with specialized areas like landscaping zones.

Compare Top CMMS Software Leaders

Types of Maintenance Using MRO Materials

Three different categories of maintenance strategies exist while using MRO stock.
Each strategy has a different level of applicability depending on your company’s resources, experience, budget and overall objectives.

Preventive Maintenance

Scheduled maintenance procedures, called preventive maintenance, are meant to extend the life of an asset by avoiding failures. Schedule-based maintenance, calendar-based maintenance and usage-based maintenance are a few different types of preventive maintenance. Each type requires different levels of technology and knowledge.

Predictive Maintenance

Predictive maintenance is a more sophisticated version of preventive maintenance. You only perform activities in predictive maintenance under certain circumstances. You’ll place tools and sensors to gather information on an asset’s status rather than relying on time-based maintenance schedules.

Corrective Maintenance

Corrective maintenance, also referred to as breakdown maintenance, is reactive in nature. You only complete tasks in this maintenance type after finding a problem. Problems frequently result from regular inspections or equipment failure. This is the major difference between reactive and preventive maintenance.

By attempting to prevent failures from happening in the first place, organizations can keep their corrective maintenance actions to a minimum.

Nevertheless, it’s customary to stock spare parts in case of unforeseen breakdowns. MRO stock ought to be prepared for use in service in the event that an emergency response is required.

What Is MRO Software?

It’s not feasible to conduct maintenance activities without the use of software.

MRO software is a solution to raise machine and device visibility, control and effectiveness in intricate shop floor activities.

Traditionally, maintenance techs conducted MRO activities on paper, but in recent years, Industry 4.0 has acted as a stimulus for paperless processes. For manufacturers, switching from isolated programs and paper-based procedures to a centralized digital solution offers significant advantages.

MRO software falls under the purview of computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS). It enables predictive maintenance to proactively maintain equipment before problems arise and manage these activities and the related supply chain. With better-managed schedules and fewer emergencies, it can lower maintenance costs, pinpoint issues at their root, and empower staff to respond accurately and effectively.

Check out our buyer’s guide for an in-depth look at top CMMS solutions with MRO capabilities. You can use our CMMS requirements template to compile a list of functionalities you need most.

Get our CMMS Software Requirements Template

Software Benefits

MRO software benefits organizations’ maintenance departments. From improving safety, increasing productivity and reducing downtime, the right system can automate tasks to keep your facilities in top shape.

Improve Health and Safety

Without regular maintenance, assets and equipment can experience malfunctions and critical failures, which can be dangerous for everyone’s safety. Such failures take a greater toll in the form of liability, regulatory discipline or even the loss of human life.

Your business could incur legal and regulatory penalties — especially if it negatively impacts personnel or community safety.

With the correct MRO software, you can ensure all safety procedures and features are operational and comply with national and international regulations. MRO software also helps you track and record equipment breakdowns, asset conditions and employee injury reports.

Reduce Downtime

Asset failures and lengthy repairs aren’t just maintenance expenses; they impact the productivity and performance of your organization as a whole.

MRO software solutions help mitigate these risks by improving visibility and control of all asset and maintenance-related activity. They can help protect your organization’s enormous capital investments by enabling timely, adequate inspections and maintenance of assets and components to reduce downtime, improve efficiency and prolong their useful life.

Improve Productivity

If you’re an MRO provider or in airline maintenance, you need software that will maximize productivity and keep operations in line with demand, given the increasing growth of the manufacturing sector. MRO software manages maintenance processes and provides solutions to increase productivity and improve user experience.

Prevent Breakdowns

Regular maintenance will help you minimize work loss, optimize your assets’ use and avoid frequent breakdowns. Running equipment continuously to the point of failure can cost more than the price of regular maintenance.

Managing a schedule for all maintenance activities is essential but can be complicated; you have to use different maintenance strategies for each asset, and it can be challenging to remember them when dealing with more machines.

Maintenance scheduling software solves this problem for you; it also allows you to access an overview of performed maintenance and understand how it impacted the asset and whether or not it needs replacement.

Streamline Work Orders

Good MRO software solutions help you receive and process maintenance requests, prioritize jobs, and streamline processes.

You can create, schedule, assign and manage work orders to track progress and use MRO software to automatically create work orders upon meeting conditions, ensuring faster action.

Compare Top CMMS Software Leaders

Next Steps

Maintenance, repair and operations encompass much more than simply fixing things. If a business doesn’t succeed with MRO, nothing else it does will matter. Stock shortages, downtime and safety problems make it unable to provide value.

Every business area is impacted by work within the maintenance, repair and overhaul categories. They’re the ones that keep things moving, which is simple to take for granted.

MRO software takes the process of monitoring maintenance jobs and reducing unexpected repair costs. Our CMMS comparison report helps you learn the ins and outs of various products before shortlisting vendors.

To affirm your decision to buy a CMMS, learn the complete advantages of deploying a CMMS. They collate all information on a single interface and provide various benefits ranging from better efficiency to improved collaboration.

How do you manage MRO initiatives in your facility? Let us know in the comments.